159A Senior Project: Research Paper

Kann Bou

159A Senior Project: Research Paper

Motivation, a British based organization, works internationally with local disability organizations to implement projects that enhance the lives of people with mobility disabilities. Motivation began in 1989 when David Constantine, a wheelchair user, and Simon Gue, both Industrial Design students at the Royal College of Art, London, won the Frye Memorial Prize for their design of a wheelchair for the developing world. Each design was to be made from local assessable materials, and easily adaptable and suitable for rougher environments of many developing countries. With their prize money, David and Simon presented their design to the Centre for the Rehabiliation of the Paralysed in Bangladesh, and were later asked by the Centre to establish a wheelchair workshop, and in 1991 Motivation was launched.

Motivation collaborates with national and international non-governmental in raising awareness of the rights of people. Motivation aims to create opportunities for people and improve greater integration within their communities. Motivation focuses on delivering these chairs for US$150 each, which includes both shipping and cost of production. Also, Motivation ensures that their manufacturers concern themselves in certain criteria and standards of working practices. Kingfisher Asia was audited as Worldmade’s first manufacturer.

The scale of the global need for wheelchairs, particularly in low income and war torn countries, led Motivation to develop ’Worldmade’, a new approach to wheechair service provision. It has been estimated that 20 million disabled people in developing and low-income nations are in need of a workable wheelchair. With the assistance of its sponsor, B&Q, which has helped with almost every aspect of the production, Motivation has been able to manage in lowering costs. Though there are some limited local supply of chairs, mainly the ones available are gifts from charities in the West and not suitable for rugged rural terrain, with designs outdated for more than 50 years and are passed from user to user. These chairs were designed mainly with Westerners in mind, which are often the wrong size and shape and hazardous to those in developing countries. The World Health Organization estimates that the average life expectancy of someone living in a developing country who is or becomes paraplegic is reduced to two to three years. But the leading cause of death for wheelchair users in developing countries was from festering and infecting pressure sores where access to medicine and antibiotics is limited and humid climates stall the body’s healing process.

Kithsiri Perera once ran fish stall in Sri Lanka until he was paralysed from an accident, after a year without work Motivation supplied him a new chair which allowed him to return to work. After 18 months in a hospital, he was unable to leave his home for lacking a wheelchair that was able to deal with his rugged concrete environment. He has gradually returned to his previous work along with self-confidence and regaining mobility. Before the Worldmade chair Perera had a chair with no seat with just a rope tied to the frame, which was a gift from local traders who combined savings to buy it.

An important design from Motivation is a revolutionary new chair, a three-wheeler that’s designed specifically for rough terrain of rural areas. Known as the Worldmade chair, it’s a first in a series of products which Motivation hopes will transform the wheelchair market in developing countries. The chair is equipped with three wheels for stability and a large front wheel for rolling easily over rough ground, and is composed of durable materials suitable for rough terrains. Worldmade wheelchairs are mass produced by a factory in eastern China, made entirely from steel for local assembly worldwide. Each user is able to customize the chair to suit their needs and size, and has a contoured pressure-relieving cushion that can be cut to size. The chair’s design and use of common materials and parts means that it’s easy to repair and maintain, and its long wheelbase allows it to cross most potholed tracks and fields. Worldmade makes an attempt at maintaining local services with local organizations to establish wheelchair services. Each wheelchair user is able to be assessed by their local service. Since the launch of this revolutionary new chair for rough terrains, Worldmade plans on launching a wheelchair more suitable for urban environments, and plans to equip each chair with a pressure care cushion.

‘Fit for Life’ training courses are offered in areas such as in Sri Lanka in how to assess wheelchair users, prescribe an appropriate wheelchair and assemble the Worldmade wheelchairs. The ‘Fit for Life’ assembly and prescription training courses are designed to prepare locals and non-professionals for running a wheelchair provision service in developing countries. These services aim at enhancing the quality of life for wheelchair users by catering to individual needs and necessities before prescribing and assembling an appropriate wheelchair. These courses target skills required to successfully assess and assemble a wheelchair, and provide users with basic instructions for using the wheelchair, which users are encouraged to develop optimistic attitudes and heighten their awareness of their rights and abilities. ‘Fit for Life’ courses encourages the development of wheelchair technicians by introducing them to wheelchairs and wheelchair users, while emphasizing the importance of correctly fitted wheelchairs and teach the assembly and maintenance of the Worldmade rural wheelchair. There are now a total of 28 graduates of the ‘Fit for Life’ prescription course, and 8 from the assembly course, The first training courses were held in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

The first ten wheelchair users to receive Worldmade wheelchairs were from South Africa. Townships like Capetown are rough and composed of rough dirt tracks which make it extremely difficult for wheelchair users to push along a normal wheelchair. With local thorn bushes causing punctures, testing has taken place in producing puncture proof solid tires. Since the introduction of the Worldmade chair, many of the wheelchair users have experienced a significant improvement in posture and ease of mobility. The Worldmade wheelchair was specifically designed to suit people who have a range of disabilities: spinal cord injury, amputation, and polio being the most common. The Worldmade wheelchair is specifically geared towards organizations such as hospitals, NGOs and INGOs where the establishment of a wheelchair provision is greatly needed.